Climate change a growing concern for Australians, Lowy survey finds

Climate change is worrying more and more Australians and it's likely that the rising alarm which has been recorded now over the last six years, is tied to a lack of confidence in Government action to address it.

It's one of the questions asked by the think tank, the Lowy Institute, in its annual, national poll.

And the Institute says the 2018 climate change findings are the most interesting result in the poll's fourteen year history.

Other issues surveyed include our threat perceptions, immigration, where a majority for the first time think the rate is too high and our views on other countries in the region.

The Lowy Institute's Alex Oliver is responsible for the poll and joins PM.

Duration: 10min 16sec

Broadcast:
Wed 20 Jun 2018, 6:53pm

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Alex Oliver, director of research, Lowy Institute

Transcript

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LINDA MOTTRAM: Climate change is worrying more and more Australians; and it's likely that the rising alarm, which has been recorded now over the last six years, is tied to a lack of confidence in government action to address it.

It's one of the questions asked by the think tank the Lowy Institute in its annual national poll. And the institute says the 2018 climate change findings are the most interesting result in the poll's 14-year history.

Other issues surveyed include our threat perceptions, immigration - where a majority for the first time think that the rate is too high - and our views on other countries in the region.

The Lowy Institute's Alex Oliver is responsible for the poll. Here's part of our conversation:

Alex Oliver, thank you very much for joining me.

ALEX OLIVER: Thanks, Linda.

LINDA MOTTRAM: A lot of conversation around the China findings in the Lowy survey this year. Let's just touch on that briefly before we go to some of the other regional stuff, because it strikes me that Australians are very pragmatic about China.

ALEX OLIVER: They are and our history of polling shows that quite clearly: that despite the fact that there are threats, and Australians are wary on the one hand of some aspects of the China relationship - for example, the military threat that it might present in the future; or this year, foreign investment from China - overwhelmingly they focus on the economic relationships, on the upside there.

China is our largest trading partner. It's very important for our prosperity. And more than 80 per cent of Australians say it's the economic relationship that's more important than any sort of threat that China might pose.

LINDA MOTTRAM: It's interesting to contrast that, I think, with the findings you make on how Australians view Indonesia, for example - another massive market, right off our northern shores - and yet Australians are still not identifying Indonesia as a democracy, even.

ALEX OLIVER: That's right. And this year it's even fewer that say that Indonesia is a democracy. In the past few years we've asked this question and around a third have said it's a democracy.

So you know, more than a decade and a half after Indonesia's democratic transition and its first democratic elections, Australians remain unconvinced about its democracy.

There are some misconceptions about the Indonesia relationship. There's also a lack of awareness about what Indonesia is and what the relationship's about.

So there have been preconceptions that Indonesia is a military threat in the past, something that President SBY (Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono) mentioned, actually, in Australian Parliament once. And he rued these misconceptions; and that it's a dangerous source of terrorism. And of course, that harks back to the Bali bombings - and Australians haven't forgotten that.

There are a couple of upsides to the relationship. Most Australians say that Indonesia is an important economy to us, which is good. So they're picking up on the fact that Indonesia's economy is turning up and that it's going to become a top-five economy in the world quite shortly, and Australians will recognise that.

They also think that we're managing the relationship quite well. As you remember, there was a rocky patch particularly when the two young Australians were executed a couple of years ago; and that's when relations hit an all-time low. But they've rebounded and they remain at a sort of a lukewarm level, so things are OK with the relationship, not great.

LINDA MOTTRAM: This is beyond the scope of the work in the poll, but one of the other persistent issues for Australia has been language. Not many Australians - fewer and fewer Australians - are learning Bahasa Indonesia. Is that the sort of measure that governments can act on to address these sorts of complications in a relationship?

ALEX OLIVER: Yes. We said that in the past in relation to Australia's relationship with Asia more generally. There's an Asia literacy issue. There's been a diplomacy issue: is there not enough of our diplomatic presence has been focused in those parts of Asia.

We've got a great presence in China, for example; in Japan. But in other, those - not smaller countries but important countries closer to us - there has been a lack of focus on it and language education is certainly part of that. And there's a huge drop in the proportion of Australians studying Bahasa.

LINDA MOTTRAM: So if there's a message on the Indonesia element here to government, it's: "Do something"?

ALEX OLIVER: Yes, it's Asia literacy.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Asia literacy.

Now, Papua New Guinea also: Australians in your survey are saying, "Yes, we have a responsibility to Papua New Guinea." Are we caring very much about that country, though?

ALEX OLIVER: We do care about it. It's a high proportion of Australians who say that we have a moral obligation towards PNG. And this is a legacy of when PNG was our only colony, and it's a legacy of that sort of post-colonial or that colonial relationship.

Most Australians also agree that stability in Papua New Guinea is important to Australia. It's our nearest, largest neighbour and the developments in Papua New Guinea in politics in the last few years: I think Australians are picking up on that and they do recognise the need for Australia to focus on that relationship.

They're a little unconvinced about the effectiveness of our aid, which is interesting because PNG is and has been for a long time our largest recipient.

Nearly $600 million in every year of aid goes to Papua New Guinea. Only around a third of Australians are convinced that that aid helps Papua New Guinea, so there's a sense that our aid is not being directed in the right area.

They're also unconvinced about Papua New Guinea's future. So there's some worries about the relationship and some worries about PNG's trajectory as a society, as an economy.

LINDA MOTTRAM: That seems fairly savvy, really, doesn't it, given some of the headlines we see coming out of Papua New Guinea around struggles with social stability in a very diverse and geographically difficult country? China coming in; those sorts of issues?

ALEX OLIVER: Yes, and violence in the Highlands just this week. So I think Australians are aware.

And we always remark on this, actually, when we talk about Australian opinion on foreign affairs: is that they know quite a lot about it and they're not afraid to express an opinion about it. And they can get some of those subtleties in Australia's relationships with its various partners and neighbours.

LINDA MOTTRAM: No just on aid: a stunning result there, really, in the poll, about how much Australians think is spent on foreign aid. What are the figures?

ALEX OLIVER: Yes: remarkable figures, in fact.

We asked this question first in 2011; and at that point the average perception of the amount of aid that the government spends as part of the federal budget was 16 per cent.

We updated that result this year and we find that Australians on average think that 14 per cent of the budget is spent on aid.

ALEX OLIVER: They think that 10 per cent of the budget should be spent on aid, so there's a slight inference there that they think that Australia spends too much on aid.

But of course, the actual expenditure by Australia as a proportion of the Federal Government budget is less than one per cent.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Less than one per cent. Let's just say that and let it sink in. It's extraordinary how big that gap is in the perception.

ALEX OLIVER: It is. And it suggests that government - well, actually, the political class generally - has quite a job to do on educating Australians as to how the budget is made up and just how much - or, in fact, how little - of our budget does go towards helping our neighbours; and important neighbours such as Papua New Guinea.

So there is a job to do. And if one was arguing, for example, for an increase in the aid budget, then you would need to do that. You would need to have that communication with Australians to make them understand a little better exactly how we apportion our funds.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Now, there's a lot of stories in here. I know the immigration finding is quite interesting. That's been discussed a bit today.

But I wanted to get to the climate change issue and renewables because, when you look at the graph that you've got of Australian attitudes to climate change over time, there is suddenly over the last few years this huge uptick in concern about climate.

Give us the figures and tell us what you think is going on there?

ALEX OLIVER: Yes. It's the most interesting result, actually, in our 14 years of polling.

Our poll has been a staple of Lowy Institute work since we started in 2005; and in 2006, when we first asked the question about climate change, 68 per cent - so nearly seven in 10 Australians - said that it was a serious and pressing problem and we should do something about it now, even if that involves significant costs.

Well, after the Rudd government came into administration and put in place and set in train a series of policy adjustments - an emissions trading scheme, a carbon tax - the concern about climate change dipped more than half to around 36 per cent of Australians who thought that it was such a problem.

And since then - that's been since the Abbott government, the Liberal Coalition Government came into power - concern has risen very consistently: up to almost the high level of concern that it was in the mid-2000s.

And it seems to me that that is expressing a dissatisfaction or an unhappiness with the policy settings of government on climate change.

In the first few years, in the late 2000s, some of the decline in concern might have been attributable to the easing of the drought, but those conditions haven't been in place since 2012, when we've seen this very strong rise in concern about climate change.

So I suspect what's going on in here is that Australians feel that government hasn't got the policy setting quite right yet. So with debate about the National Energy Guarantee and a lot of public debate and conversation about energy security, about where our electricity supply comes from, about the closure of coal-fired power stations - that hasn't yet been convincing.

And in fact, this year there are more Australians who think that we should devote government attention to renewables; and only 14 per cent who say that the Government should be focusing on traditional energy sources such as coal and gas.

LINDA MOTTRAM: So more messages for government about policy settings in this?

ALEX OLIVER: Yes, some pretty clear ones there.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Alex Oliver, thank you very much for joining us.

ALEX OLIVER: Pleasure, Linda. Thank you.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Director of research at the Lowy Institute, Alex Oliver.

And the 2018 Lowy poll is at the institute's website if you want to read more.

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